I was so focussed yesterday morning trying to capture a picture of the super moon as it was setting that I quite forgot that, as I was facing west, in the east behind me, the sun was about to rise. The sky to the west was a grey blue colour, but when I turned and looked towards the sea, everything was bright orange, and there was the distinctive spire of the Church of St James the Less silhouetted, on the horizon.
You can see that spire from all round the area. Indeed it is said that the Earl of Errol who lived in Slains Castle arranged for the church to be built there at Chapelhill with a spire that would seem more at home on an English village church, to ensure that there was a pleasing view from the castle.
You can certainly see the spire from the castle and you can see it from the high ground in Hatton, at Hobshill and Northfield farm where I stood in awe yesterday as I watched the huge disk of the sun peep over the horizon, beside the church.
I had a big telephoto lens on the camera and I was able to capture a lovely picture of the spire through some branches, just as some geese flew by. The words of Rudyard Kipling came to mind, “The dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay.” from his poem, The Road to Mandalay (Barrack Room Ballads). We may be far away from Manadalay in Myanmar, or Burma as we once called it, but I can appreciate his feeling of the dawn coming up like thunder. It certainly did yesterday outer Curden, ‘crost the Bay.